#105

Unlike nearly everyone else in that car, I wasn’t looking at a screen while we sped northward along the tracks (I’ve ridden enough trains to know that if I look down for half a minute I’ll feel sick), so was staring out the window instead. There’s always a lot see. Tonight it was an extra red sunset of the type you only get when the wildfires are too many to keep track of and the winds are all wrong. Then it was a yellow moon rising over mountains you could barely see, though they weren’t far off in the distance. Then it was the scrolling station sign of tall orange letters telling me what our conductor was about to announce: Trespasser fatality involving train 380 near Burlingame station, expect delays of 60 – 90 minutes. A collective Oh No, How Awful. A collective This Is Going To Take Forever. Giants fans realized they would miss their game and were disappointed. A man in front shouted every few minutes Get This Train Moving Already, He’s Dead And I Need To Get Home. A girl in the back shouted Stop Being An Asshole. A Giants fan walked to the front of the car and began to talk with the man, who became so happily engaged in the conversation that for a short while he forgot he had anything to shout about.